The "Major Questions" Doctrine Sinks the Clean Power Plan and Marks a Major Milestone in Administrative Law.

Given the ambiguity that the EPA and the courts have found in section 111 of the Clean Air Act, executive rather than legislative climate change governance runs the risk of continuing pendulum swings from one administration to the next. This is the fourth in a series of articles that we have written regarding the Obama administration's greenhouse gas emission rules for existing power plants-the Clean Power Plan-which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued in October 2015.[1] In our first article, Part One: The Clean Power Plan: Legal Challenges and Prospects, published in the Fall 2016 issue of Infrastructure, we analyzed the legal challenges to the plan.[2] In the second article, Part Two: The Clean Power Plan: Legal Challenges and Prospects, published in the Winter 2017 issue of Infrastructure, we analyzed the prospects of the plan in light of the election of President Donald J. Trump, including the possible legal paths available to the new administration (and its opponents) to roll back or preserve the Clean Power Plan.[3] In our third article, The ACE Rule and the Chevron Doctrine, published in the Fall 2021 issue of Infrastructure, we examined the challenge to the Trump administration's replacement of the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.[4] In our third article, we noted that there were four pending petitions for certiorari seeking review of the D.C. Circuit's opinion in American Lung Assn v. Environmental Protection Agency. [Extracted from the article]